We provide an explicit thick and thin decomposition for oriented
hyperbolic manifolds $M$ of dimension $5$. The result implies improved
universal lower bounds for the volume $\rmvol_5(M)$ and, for $M$
compact, new estimates relating the injectivity radius and the diameter
of $M$ with $\rmvol_5(M)$. The quantification of the thin part is
based upon the identification of the isometry group of the universal
space by the matrix group $\PS_\Delta {\rm L} (2,\mathbb{H})$ of
quaternionic $2\times 2$-matrices with Dieudonn\'e determinant
$\Delta$ equal to $1$ and isolation properties of $\PS_\Delta {\rm
L} (2,\mathbb{H})$.